Brave New World
by I'mYourWildGirl
Summary: Randall Boggs is finally back in the monster world. But everything has changed, and he has to figure out a way to change with it. And there's the small matter of his annoying new assistant... Randall/OC, some Randall & Sulley LIGHT friendship (considering they're enemies for the most part).
1. Prologue

_A/N: Okay, not my first fanfic, but it is my first time posting one on the Internet. Be gentle, please, and patient with my computer acting up and me being an idiot about technology. This story is Randall/OC, so be warned if you dislike OCs. Also, I would appreciate feedback if you think someone is OOC or if you spot a __plot hole, because I'm paranoid about that, but as previously stated: be gentle. Enjoy!_

Prologue

Randall Boggs had lived in the human world for one year, two months and seventeen days.

He'd counted.

While there he'd had a lot of fun. Oh, a _lot _of fun. Getting beat half brainless with a shovel, for instance. Or run over by a car… three times. Once, he'd been captured and put in a fight against a big, angry dog with the word _Killer _studded out on its collar. That one was a real laugh.

For one year, two months and seventeen days Randall had starved, and bruised, and hurt. He'd gotten beaten up so bad he'd honestly thought he would die, so bad that he'd had to hide away from humans in the swamp for months sometimes to heal. He'd suffered in ways he'd only imagined for other people, and his pride suffered more than his body ever did.

Because Randall had _lost. _Right when he should have been winning, when he was about to get everything he ever wanted, he'd been defeated by Sullivan, of all enormous idiots. Beaten, and exiled, and forced to live like an animal.

Randall Boggs didn't forgive, and he definitely didn't forget. So when Wazowski the one-eyed beach ball found him and gave him the news, scowling-_looks like the CDA's letting all the exiles back in. That means you too, you reptilian freak. Yeah, I ain't happy about it either_-well, he was glad. Definitely glad. But he hadn't forgotten one damn minute of the last year, two months, and seventeen days. And by the time he was heading back through the door-portal he was already knew that Sullivan-Sullivan, Mr. Perfect who always did the _right _thing, the _nice _thing, even for a guy like Randall-was going to suffer at least that long, by the time Randall was through with him.

"You know, if it was up to me you'd still be rotting back there in the woods," Wazowski informed him as they were going through the door. "This was all Sulley's idea, making sure you got back, so you'd better be damn grateful, Lizard Boy."

And Randall smiled big and perfectly fake at him, and he showed his teeth when he saw Wazowski tremble, just a little.

He was looking forward to showing them all his particular brand of gratitude.


	2. Chapter 1

_A/N: Here's the next chapter, guys! For your pleasure and your enjoyment._

Ch. 1

It figured, Randall thought, that once Sullivan took over the entire scare industry went to hell.

Randall glared down the line of doors. All of the monsters he could see looked ridiculous, clowned up with weird glasses and face paint, carrying props around like they were getting ready to perform for some brat's birthday party.

And the real killer was, Randall was going to have to do the exact same thing.

_We're MONSTERS! _he wanted to scream at them all. _Monsters do not joke, monsters are not funny and it's degrading to pretend that we are. We scare little kids, we make them scream and cry and have nightmares. You are all IDIOTS!_

But Randall kept quiet. He had to. He wasn't even supposed to have this job. Sure as hell nobody _wanted _him to have this job, but he didn't have any other options. Being gone for a year meant that he didn't have a job, an apartment, anything.

And of course Sullivan, Mr. Nice Guy, had to butt in and be generous. Sure, Randall could just have his old position back, and he could crash on the couch in the break room until he got his own place.

Randall hated charity. Especially Sullivan's. And it galled him that now he owed everything-even just being here at all-to the monster he hated more than anything.

Looking out over his new workplace, Randall felt a deep and penetrating urge to hit something.

Instead, he stalked over to the station he'd been appointed to, the next-to-last on the left. The door wasn't there yet but the assistant was, a blue-skinned girl with pigtails and prehensile feet. She was jotting something down on a form, but when she looked up and saw him she put it down and smiled.

"Hi!" she beamed. "You're the new Giggler, right?"

Giggler. Randall felt ill.

"I've been waiting for you," she continued. "Nona Drip," she jabbed thumb at her chest.

Randall glared at her. He hated chatty, friendly people. Fungus had been like that, before Randall had broken him in properly.

After a few moments Nona cocked an eyebrow at him. "This is the part where you say, _Hi, I'm Randall Boggs, so nice to meet you._"

Randall folded both sets of arms across his chest, and glared at her some more.

Nona rolled her eyes. "Whatever, Grumpy," she turned to the keypad and swiped a card key through it, and Randall noticed that she had a tail-light blue like the rest of her skin, with a triangle tip.

"So what's the game plan, Grumpy?" she asked.

Randall was actually taken aback enough to let out an inquisitive-sounding grunt.

"Well, you know," Nona waved a hand through the air. It only had four fingers, and they were too long, with an extra joint. "You can't just walk in there with nothing and expect the kid to laugh, so I assume you've got a strategy."

"Mm," Truth be told, Randall hadn't thought that far. Now that he did, a knot of anger grew in his stomach. Another thing that wasn't fair: there wasn't anything about him that was funny, or cute, or even approachable. That was why he'd been so good at scaring. And now he was even worse, all skinny and bruised, and his scales hadn't had a good cleaning in months, and he didn't see how he was supposed to make some snot-nosed brat laugh with any of that.

It really wasn't fucking _fair._

"Y'know, I could _help _you," Nona suggested, peering up at him from under the blunt fringe of her pink-streaked purple bangs. "I've been working here for about six months, so I know how it's supposed to go down. I could just take the first few doors for you and you could, I dunno, watch," She looked oddly excited, her eyes glittering.

Randall bristled. It wasn't such a bad idea, but he'd accepted enough help over the last couple of days. "No," he said, flatly.

"Wow, I got an entire word out of you. I'll call _The Daily Glob,_" She grinned at him, like he was in on the joke, despite all evidence to the contrary.

Randall could already feel a headache building between his eyes.

"Well," she shrugged, "if you change your mind…" She set about the work of attaching the oversized laugh canister to the door.

"I won't," Randall said through his teeth.

Without looking at him, Nona said, "Two words."

Randall wondered if he'd get fired for killing his assistant on the first day, and if so, whether it was worth it.

"All yours, Grumpy," Nona gestured to the door and smiled again. Her mouth was wide and her teeth were sharp and double-rowed, like a shark's. Randall thought, in some corner of his mind, that she could have scared a lot of kids with that smile if Sullivan hadn't gone and messed with a perfectly good system.

And then Randall couldn't think anymore, because he was turning the knob on the door, and opening it, and going inside. He had no idea what he was doing, but he was doing it.

Randall Boggs didn't come out of that door for a while.


	3. Chapter 2

Ch. 2

"What the hell happened to _you?_" were Nona's first words when he finally came out.

Randall scowled. He scowled a lot, but this one was something special. Flowers would wither before it.

"Get me another _door,_" he snarled.

Nona didn't cower like Fungus would have. Instead she raised her eyebrows, and then she smiled. "Oh, look," she cooed, then reached up and plucked something from the top of his head. It was a little red ribbon tied in a bow. Randall bared his teeth when he saw it; he'd forgotten that was there, tied around his front frond.

That stupid toddler rat.

"She decorated you," Nona said in delight. "That's so sweet."

"It was stupid," Randall snapped at her, "that's what it was. And completely degrading. And-"

"Oh, come _off _it," Nona told him. Then, without further ado, she retied the bow on one of her own short purple pigtails.

"You're an idiot," Randall told her. "They gave me a complete and utter _ moron _for an assistant."

"So have me replaced," Nona said, folding her arms.

Randall blinked.

"Go on," she said. "Ask Sulley to get you a new assistant. But I think we both know it won't do you any good. I know why he assigned me to you. I always get the really bastard-mean ones, because he knows I'm the only one on this entire floor who'll put up with it," Just for a second, a split second, she looked bitter. "Like it or not, Grumpy, we're stuck, so you'd better get used to it."

Randall was shaking with rage by the time she was finished. "You disrespectful little-"

"I respect people who earn it," she told him. "So far, all you've done is be rude and call me names."

"Do you know what that little _brat _made me do?" Randall hissed. "A tea party. I've been making kids scream since before you graduated high school, little girl, and she made me sit there with that _thing _on my head and have a _tea party!_"

Nona actually seemed to be taken aback for a minute, staring at him without a word. Randall ended up looking somewhere off to the side, mostly because he was pissed at himself for going off like that. Before, all of his angry outbursts had been calculated, to get something out of a situation. He didn't like just losing control that way.

Finally Nona said, "Wow. You're really one of the old-school guys."

Randall didn't answer her.

"Well, look," she continued, suddenly cheerful. "You made the little girl laugh, that's what matters. The canister's full. Now, I'm gonna switch out the door and you can try again, yeah?"

"I hate this job," Randall muttered.

"Yeah, well," Nona shrugged. "You'll get used to it."

He didn't.

By lunch Randall had only collected two other canisters. Most of the children he visited started screaming before he could even do anything, and scream wouldn't put energy in the new canisters, so that was useless.

As for the laughs that Randall did get, he had to do… _things_… for them. Horrible things. Things that did not so much offend his dignity as completely destroy it. In desperation he had even tried out the Joke of the Day from the screen on some boy, unsuccessfully.

And through it all Nona-friendly, encouraging little imbecile that she was-kept chattering on about he was doing good, she'd definitely seen worse, there was some guy called Phlegm who had to pick jacks out of his ass three times an hour, and there was one Giggler she used to work with, all he had were these terrible knock-knock jokes and he had to be transferred back to the mail room.

If he hadn't had the promise of a break come lunchtime, Randall was sure he would have strangled her.

But finally the whistle blew, and he almost sagged in relief. For the next half-hour at least he wouldn't half to put up with screaming children or inane chatter, or his own failures. The silence, Randall thought to himself, would be golden.

And it had already started. Nona wasn't even looking at him, because every monster who passed by stopped to say hi to her, or talk for a few seconds while she got her purse. And the little chatterbox was only too happy to oblige.

That made Randall scowl. He knew Nona was an annoying twit, but everyone else, it seemed, thought differently. That only confirmed the long-held belief Randall had that everyone, except for him, was a hopeless idiot.

Nona finally went off arm in arm with a girl monster covered in bristling orange quills, and Randall went in a different direction, towards the cafeteria. He was hungry-and he knew he had a lot of eating to catch up on. More than once during the past year he'd had the singular pleasure of dining out of a garbage can.

Not that the cafeteria food was much better, but still.

Almost as soon as Randall walked in, though, he heard the whispering.

He would've had to been blind and deaf not to; it wasn't exactly subtle. Tables hushed when he passed them-eyes stared-then broke into a fury of lowered voices once his back was to them. Randall could catch snatches of the conversations:

_Don't know what _he's _doing here-_

_Banished-_

_-criminal, always knew he was-_

_-makes me sick-_

_-scares me-_

Randall's sharp teeth started to grind and the tip of his tail flicked in agitation. It wasn't that the words shamed him-no one, _no one _had the power to make him feel ashamed-but it made him tense. He wasn't sure how much Sullivan had told everyone, if they knew about the machine, and kidnapping that little girl. Randall didn't like feeling uninformed in any situation.

It could have just been _him. _Randall knew no one had liked him much, good at his job or no. He'd scared the other monsters as much as he did his assigned kids. They'd looked in his eyes, seen something missing there, and stayed away.

And now, it seemed, they'd stopped being scared just enough to get vocal about it.

The monster in front of Randall in line gave him a dirty look, all eight of his eyes narrowed. Randall glared right back, and after a few moments it was the other guy who looked away.

_Screw you, _Randall thought. _Screw all of you. Like I need your approval._ He got his sandwich and canned vegetable in complete silence, ignoring an awful lot in the process. He was almost sure the lunch lady had spit in his food. And when he was walking through the cafeteria again, something hit the back of his head in a moist splat.

Randall looked down at his feet, where the thing had fallen. It was a green-skinned fruit with pink stripes, burst open.

Juice dripped down the back of his neck. Someone in the sea of tables was laughing, and others were joining in. Randall's scales flushed a reddish color in anger, and his lips pulled back from his teeth.

_You need this job, _he reminded himself. _You need it bad._

With a growl he walked away, reptile-quick, out of the doors of the cafeteria. He'd eat in the break room. Behind him the laughter got even louder.

Randall walked through the halls camouflaged invisible, his tray floating through the empty air. He didn't care who thought it was strange.


	4. Chapter 3

_A/N: Chapter Three is up! Enjoy. And thanks be to Purple Duskywing for being my first reviewer. You rock, Purple!_

Ch. 3

When Randall returned to his station, Nona and her orange-spiked friend were standing around it, talking. Randall hung back; he wasn't up to enduring another conversation with Nona just quite yet, and they didn't notice him.

No, they had better things to do, as Randall had the misfortune to find out.

"Shut _up, _Alice," Nona hissed, pushing at her arm. "Fuck. Maybe speak a bit louder, I don't think the _entire_ laugh floor heard you."

The friend, Alice smirked. "Oh, Nona, you poor little thing. You've got it so bad."

Nona flushed indigo all over her face and neck and ears, and Randall groaned as he realized what he'd had the singularly bad timing to walk in on. _Girl talk. _Kill him now.

Alice patted Nona on the shoulder. "I mean, you know it's bad luck, right? He's your boss and all. If anything does happen with you two, Sulley'll turn into a paranoid freak, waiting for a lawsuit to crop up somewhere."

Randall's lip curled up in supreme disgust. This was turning out to be one of those days that tested the limits of his patience.

"Yeah, Alice. I know that perfectly damn well," Nona said. She stared off at the front of the laugh floor, where Sullivan was talking with Wazowski. She sighed, deeply.

"You _do _have good taste, though," Alice said, following her gaze. "If you _had _to pick someone hilariously inappropriate for you. I mean, _look _at him."

Nona nodded fervently.

Not for the first time that day, Randall thought he was going to be sick. If he was, he knew where he'd aim. It occurred to him that maybe Sullivan and Wazowski had conspired to get him the assistant he'd find most repulsive, just to piss him off. He'd believe it.

"He could pick me up in one arm," Nona said dreamily. "One arm," Her tail curled up behind her back into a perfect heart shape.

Randall looked down at his own arms-four thin arms, wiry and almost brittle looking, these days. His scowl deepened.

"Not to mention," Nona continued, "he's probably the nicest guy in Monstropolis-"

And that was when Randall finally had _enough._ He wasn't going to listen to a lecture on Sullivan's finer points. He walked the rest of the way to his station, nonchalantly, like he'd just got back.

Nona flicked her eyes up to look at him. "Hi, Grumpy."

The friend, Alice, looked scared though-she glanced at him once, briefly, then murmured a _See you, Nones,_ and quickly went off. It made Randall feel quite satisfied for a few seconds.

Nona, however, frowned slightly after her. "Well, back to the old grind, I guess," she said, recovering herself. She swiped a fresh card key and the sounds of a door coming in started.

When she wasn't looking Randall squinted at her. He didn't think much of her-he'd had nicer opinions of rotten vegetables-but somehow he'd thought better of her than fawning over _Sullivan. _Holier-than-thou, posturing, caricature Sullivan. A blind man could see through his pretenses.

Nona glanced up and caught him studying her, and smirked. "It's creepy to stare," she told him, and he growled and looked at something else furiously. He wound up glaring at the door that settled into the station.

Nona laughed. "There's no need to look at that thing like it took away your cookie."

"There's some little kid behind that thing," Randall said. "And I have to make it laugh."

"Yeah, I guess you do," said Nona.

"It probably won't."

"It counts if you try."

"Don't you _ever _shut up?" Randall snarled.

"Nope," Nona gave him a little push towards the door. "Go do your job, Grumpy."

As it turned out, Randall didn't even get the chance. The kid behind this door was asleep, snoring like a jet plane taking off, and wouldn't wake up no matter what Randall did. He spent a good five minutes trying, anyway. When he finally gave up and stalked out he looked automatically for Nona and her positive comments, and was surprised when she wasn't hanging around their door. Instead he saw her some distance away, talking to another monster.

The other monster was short, about up to Nona's knee, furry and bright yellow with big batlike ears and a rainbow clown wig perched on top of his head. He was smiling, smarmy and smug in a way that set Randall's teeth on edge, like he couldn't be more pleased with himself.

Nona, on the other hand, looked pissed. Randall found that intriguing, purely because it didn't fit in with her happy-go-lucky act. Her prehensile toes were tapping against the floor, and her hands kept curling into fists. Her lips were snarling, raising up over the points of her shark teeth. Randall was too far away to hear what was being said, but that look on her face told him it probably wasn't nice.

The other monster said something else, and Nona snapped out a _Screw you! _loud enough for Randall, and probably everyone else, to hear. The yellow guy grinned and shook a finger in Nona's face, and she slapped it away furiously, her mouth working as she spat out another sentence that was probably full of swearing. Yellow Guy didn't look perturbed at all, and said one more thing before he turned his back on her and walked away. When he did Nona's hand flashed out and plucked the wig from his head. Then, spotting Randall, she walked back to the station.

"I got you a prop, Grumpy," she told him, standing on tiptoe and plopping it on top of his head before he could voice his opinions on rainbow wigs and those who wore them.

You stole it, Randall said, somewhat gleefully. He'd known all along that the goody-goody thing was just a front. It was for most.

"Saw that, huh?" Nona studied the effect of the wig on top of his head. "Very handsome," she pronounced.

Randall sneered and ripped the thing off of him in disdain. "Who knows where this thing has been?"

"On top of a complete _loser's _head, that's where its been," Nona said. "Trust me, you can only improve it."

"What, did he refuse to join your fan club?"

For once, it seemed he'd managed to irritate her. "None of your damn business is what he did," she snapped. Then she looked at the door, with its empty canister, and crossed her arms. "That one didn't take to you either, huh?"

Low blow. Randall crossed his own arms and glared down at her. "It was asleep," he said stiffly. He had his pride, after all.

Nona sighed, and rubbed at her face with one hand. "Yeah, okay. I'll get you another one," She brightened. "But seriously, props can _help…_"

And with that, she seemed to forget her bad mood entirely and was off with her cheery, let-me-tell-you-how-to-do-your-job chattering again. Randall didn't understand it at all. His angers stayed with him.

And, after much duress, he ended up using the wig. It _did _help. But he didn't tell Nona that.


	5. Chapter 4

_A/N And here be Chapter Four, fellow fans. Thank you very much for all the lovely reviews, because they make my day. :) Thanks especially to Smeagolia and Purple Duskywing for being multiple reviewers and making my ego grow shamelessly. And even more thanks to the people who have __followed/favorited this story, because that also feeds my ego-monster and makes me happy. Also, apologies ahead of time if Sulley comes off as a little Southern in this chapter, but I was channeling John Goodman's voice when I wrote him and it just sort of happened. Have fun!_

Ch. 4

Randall's history with Sullivan was a long and complicated one. To make it short and uncomplicated: he hated the guy.

He'd hated him back at University, when Sullivan was the privileged rich kid who slept through his classes and cheated when it suited him-yeah, Randall had heard about that. Everyone had. Meanwhile, Randall was the nerd with the embarrassing disappearing habit who had to fight for everything he got.

Then, when Randall finally got to be a scarer, he'd been on top for the briefest, sweetest time. He'd come into his own finally, and there wasn't a monster in the entire company who could rack up the points like he did. Until Sullivan-who, in Randall's opinion, shouldn't have been allowed out of the mail room after the stunts he'd pulled-got hired on as a scarer, too. And he beat Randall. On his _first fucking day. _And suddenly Randall was number two, which had to be the most humiliating position in the world. And he'd stayed there.

Randall hated Sullivan for his smugness and his superiority and his kiss-up attitude. He hated him for having everything come easily and acting like it was no big deal. He hated him for being fake. He hated Sullivan for defeating him and sentencing him to one year, two months and seventeen days of hell. He hated him for lots of reasons.

And here he was anyway, hanging around after work, waiting to talk to him.

It took a while. Monsters kept coming up to Sullivan on their way out and talking to him, or bringing him news about problems. The word _canisters _ kept coming up. Randall ground his teeth after a time. He hadn't wanted to talk to Sullivan anyway, much less lurk around and gawk at his flock of pathetic Gigglers.

It said a lot, Randall thought to himself, about how much he wanted a new assistant. Her little theories about being stuck with each other be _damned, _he wasn't tolerating Nona and her infuriating brand of perky idiocy any longer. Even if it meant he had to ask Sullivan for another favor.

The indignities he had to bear never ended.

Finally Sullivan's band of disgraced scarers left him alone. He stood around jotting down some notes on a clipboard, and Randall approached him, eyeing him in distaste.

"Sullivan," he said.

The other monster looked up at him. "Oh. Hey, Randall," Sullivan looked wary, like he wasn't sure what to expect of him. Given what had gone down the last time they'd seen each other, Randall wasn't surprised.

He still remembered how satisfying it felt, beating Sullivan around and working off almost ten years of loathing in the process. And then, of course, Randall had tried to kill him-twice. He'd come within a bare inch of doing it, too. Before Sullivan threw him into the human world, that was.

None of that exactly made for comfortable conversation afterwards. _So did I actually break your ribs about a year ago, or did I imagine that cracking sound? And how _did _your windpipe heal up?_

"Did you need something?" Sullivan asked cautiously, interrupting Randall's morbidity. His claws fiddled with the pages on his clipboard.

_Of course,_ Randall thought. Of _course _that was how Sullivan saw himself, big generous provider, giving a second chance to a guy that didn't deserve it. Sullivan was probably laughing at him right now. His fronds bristled.

"Yeah, actually, I do," It came out belligerent. Randall crossed his arms and knew he looked just like someone _shouldn't _when they were talking to their boss-and that word pissed him off to no end-but he didn't care.

Sullivan straightened up to a height Randall could only manage when he rose up on only one set of legs, and his eyes narrowed. "No reason to be rude," he said evenly, like he was keeping tight control over himself. "Just tell me."

"What the _hell _were you thinking with that assistant?" Randall snapped out before he could think better of it.

"What? Nona?" Sullivan's furry brows drew together in perplexity.

With that, all the frustrations of the day came out in one big rush. "Yeah, _her. _First off, she's what? A week out of college? She's probably barely qualified to bag groceries. And she's completely unprofessional. Talks like she doesn't have an off button. She's disrespectful and mouthy, she thinks she knows how to do my job better than I do, and she's _cheerful _about it!" Randall didn't realize he was yelling until the last words were ringing out in the empty air of the laugh floor.

And Sullivan, instead of yelling back or firing him-both of which Randall fully expected-laughed. Deep-belly laughed, like a jolly mountain. Randall suddenly felt like an over-emoting idiot, which did not sit well with him. "What?" he ground out.

Sullivan shook his head, a stupid smile still on his face. "You're the only guy I've ever met," he said, "who's dead set on hating _everyone._"

"I'm justified," Randall said flatly. "So are you gonna fix this or what?"

"See? _That's _what I mean," Sullivan frowned at him. "Nona's about the best assistant we've got. She's good at working through the bugs in the new tech, doesn't complain about being shifted around a lot, works overtime more often than she doesn't-"

"_You _work with her then," Randall said. "I dare you to take an entire shift of that meaningless chatter without strangling her."

Sullivan looked him in the eye steadily. After a few seconds, Randall felt uncomfortable enough to glance down.

"And the thing is," Sullivan scratched at the back of his neck, "when I was assigning you I figured out of everyone here she'd bother you the least."

"You've got to be joking."

Sullivan shrugged. "Like I said, she's good at her job. She's friendly… it'd take a lot to have a problem with her."

Randall ignored the dig. "I can't work with that woman."

Sullivan set his clipboard down. "That actually brings up something I've been meaning to talk to you about."

Randall blinked. "Something _you've _been wanting to talk about with _me._"

Sullivan nodded.

"Gee," sarcasm dripped from his voice, "I'm so _honored._"

Sullivan's fists clenched. "Are you gonna hear me out or not?"

Randall decided to stay silent. For now.

Sullivan looked at him and sighed, hands relaxing. "Well, you have to have been wondering why I made sure you got back here. Gave you a job and everything."

Actually, Randall hadn't. From what he'd gleaned over the handful of days he'd been back in the monster world, the CDA had changed a few of their policies since the change to laugh energy. One of them had been the exile on the banished monsters. As for why he himself had returned, when by all rights Sullivan should have kept his mouth shut and not let anyone know about his so-called 'banishment'-well, Sullivan was a stupid guy with stupid principles. He didn't have the sense to keep his enemy far away.

"Why did you?" Randall asked warily.

The other monster rubbed a paw over his face, and Randall was surprised at how tired he looked. "You wouldn't believe all the problems this company has been having," he said quietly. "We've had to shred at least a fourth of the doors-because the kids wouldn't laugh, ot the things just wouldn't open, or for a bunch of other reasons no one's been able to figure out. We had to get new ones-and now those are going bad too. And the canisters have to be our biggest issue."

The long line of monsters with complaints popped into Randall's mind.

"They just won't hold the laughs," Sullivan said in frustration. "Sometimes they will. But then they leak all out, or they explode, or they don't power anything. I've had entire _teams _work on this and no one knows what's wrong."

Oh, boo-hoo. "And what," Randall said, "does that have to do with me?"

Sullivan didn't say anything for a moment. Then his face twisted, like he was about to do something he really didn't want to. Randall understood the feeling.

"I need your help," he said.

Randall _laughed._ This was too much. Too much.

Sullivan pushed on determinedly. "You built that machine by yourself. The Scream Extractor. I poked around the remains of that thing, and you didn't channel the scream into any canisters. Which means you're the only one who's ever built another containment unit for energy."

Randall drawled, "And you want me to just do it all over again for the laughs, do you?"

Sullivan nodded without a word.

"And you trust me to do that? After everything?" Randall's lip curled. "You're handing me an engraved invitation to screw you over here."

"You think I don't know that?" Sullivan growled, his hand smacking down on top of a table loudly. "That I'm a complete dumbass for coming to you for anything? Don't you get it? _I don't have a choice. _This factory's about to go under, and all I can do is ask _you _for help!" Sullivan all but spat out the last words, like they tasted awful in his mouth. And it occurred to Randall that at last he had some power in this situation.

"It's that bad, huh?" he said, just a bare hint of mockery in his voice.

Sullivan visibly clenched his teeth, then relaxed, seeming to gather himself. "I'll make you a deal, he said. "I'll give you tools to work on the new canisters. And if you can do it, I'll promote you to technical supervisor. All you'll have to do is make sure all the machinery runs smoothly. You won't have to be a Giggler anymore, or deal with Nona if you hate her so much. Okay?"

Randall considered his options for a few long moments, making a big show of it just to see Sullivan squirm. His mind was already made up.

"I'll do it," Randall said.


	6. Chapter 5

_A/N: So I decided to post an extra chapter because I've been neglecting it for so long. A reward for you, my faithful readers. :)_

Ch. 5

On Thursday morning, Randall showed up at his station early. Nona was, sadly, already there, gobbling down a huge muffin.

"You look like you're enjoying yourself," Randall said snidely.

Nona ignored his tone and nodded, her mouth full. Then she held out a second, equally huge muffin to him.

"No," he said.

Nona finally managed to swallow her enormous bite. "C'mon," she said. "My toothbrush has more body mass than you do. Consider this my concern for your general welfare."

"I don't _need _your concern," Randall said, eyeing her coldly.

If Nona rolled her eyes any harder, he thought, they'd fall out on the floor. "Oh, of course you don't," she said. "Cause you're big and you're bad and you don't need anyone or anything on this entire planet, you're so tough. All that being said-" she held up her hand again, "-take the damn muffin, please."

Randall looked at her, and his breath hissed out between his teeth. It sounded resigned even to him.

"They're warm," Nona said sweetly. "I bought them fresh."

It was easier not to argue. It usually was. Randall took the muffin.

"See? Not so bad."

Randall took a bite of the muffin to stop himself from answering her.

Randall had started working on Monday. In the handful of days they'd worked together, he and Nona had already developed something of a routine. He had gotten used to her, a little bit-though he still thought about wrapping an entire roll of duct tape around her head to buy himself some peace.

Sullivan hadn't been lying-Nona _was_ good at being an assistant. The doors, for some reason, had started getting turned around on the way to the stations and snarling up the entire process-but Nona had a way with the keypad and experience with little disasters like that, and the door always ended up where it belonged a few minutes later. And she was quick about changing out the doors and canisters, which he grudgingly appreciated. Fungus had to have been the slowest assistant alive.

But Randall was _not _good at being a Giggler.

Since Monday, his accomplishments had included:

-Being chased out of one kid's room by a very small, ankle-biting dog.

-Making a little boy scream and wet his pants. Judging from the smell, probably more than that, too. Randall didn't look too closely.

-Getting hit with a baseball bat, a soccer trophy, a plastic ninja sword and a pillow. In no particular order.

-Filling up exactly eight canisters.

-Getting so many pep talks from Nona that he lost count.

-Taking apart a laugh canister and fiddling with it late at night.

It hadn't been a productive few days. Especially on that front. So far Randall had concluded that the laugh canisters were bigger than the scream ones, but otherwise exactly the same, which he had a sneaking suspicion was causing all the problems. Screams and laughs were two different substances, after all. Unfortunately, a guess wasn't going to help anything, and his tinkering was turning up exactly nothing towards identifying the problem and finding a solution. He kept working at it, though. He had to; the challenge of it taunted him, made him think of mechanical structures even in his sleep. Something had to turn up sometime.

The whistle blew, and the day started all around them. Nona grabbed their muffin wrappers and took them over to the trash. She usually wore long shirts-today's was pale pink, and it swished around her upper legs. Randall wondered, absently, how long her hair would be, assuming he ever got to see it out of the pigtails.

Then, resigned to feeling ridiculous like he usually was these days, he put on the wig. When this was all over, he was going to burn the damn thing and bury it in an unmarked grave.

"Ah, _there's _what I've been missing," Nona said when she returned. "That happy face."

"There's what _I've _been missing," Randall mocked her. "The _silence._"

Nona stuck her tongue out at him as she dialed up a door. And the day began.

It was almost, Randall thought to himself, like being a scarer again. Except this time around, the screams weren't a good sign.

"Doing good, big guy," Nona told him as he came out of one door, canister still empty. He growled at her.

"Always a pleasure talking with you, Grumpy," was her cheerful reply.

"I don't need your sarcasm," Randall snapped at her as they waited for the new door.

Nona blinked up at him, all innocent. "Who's being sarcastic?"

Randall stared at her hard. _If you knew the things I've done, _he thought, _if you knew even a little bit of them, you'd run the hell away from here. Screaming. _

The thought very nearly pleased him.

"Look, you got this," she said as the door slid into place. "It's in the bag already. Just go in there and prove it."

"Thank you, Self-Help Seminar."

"Seriously," she looked disarmingly sincere. "Give it hell, huh?"

Randall, unable to come up with a response, went through the door.

And slipped.

To be fair, it was a magnificent slip. One foot came down on some slick plastic material and immediately his front set of legs went out from under him. Flailing, he tried to steady with his back legs and only succeeded in banging his head against the closed door behind him. Then, for a moment, he almost regained his balance, before that same plastic something sent him skidding forward hard. It ended with a full-body slam into a wall that made him yell out in pain and let loose with a string of cursing the like of which he hadn't spoken since college. For a moment he lay on the floor, breathing rage.

Then the laughter started. Randall looked up and saw the kid this room belonged to-a little girl-laughing hysterically, her small face red and her hands clutching her stomach. For a moment Randall could imagine what he looked like, splayed on the floor, rainbow wig askew, scales shifting about ten different colors in pain. Ridiculous. But then he couldn't help but grin in satisfaction. He'd got what he came for.

When he came back through the door Nona was twirling around in her swivel chair. She stopped it with her foot when she saw him.

"Good _job,_" she said, and smiled at him. For the first time Randall noticed that her smile was too big and too bright to be faked. It made him feel very disconcerted for a second. He couldn't remember the last time someone had smiled at him and meant it.

"Told you you could do it," Nona teased, before she turned to unload the canister.

Then things started exploding.

The lights above burst in great showers of electric sparks, and monsters screamed. Then other, louder blasts rocked the room. Randall whipped around and saw explosions marking a deadly path down the line of doors, detonating in bright flashes of light and smoke and, out of place, the sound of laughter.

_The canisters, _he realized.

"Oh shit," Nona whispered.

Without even thinking about it Randall grabbed her by the arms and yanked her away from their door, stumbling backwards. Her body collided with his and they went down, Randall for the second time that day. This time, though, he landed on Nona, whose breath punched out of her at the impact. Then she screamed, because their own canister went off with an ear-bleedingly loud blast. Randall shut his eyes and ducked his head, and a searing wind blew over them, ruffling his fronds. He felt Nona's long fingers with their little claws digging into his arms, her breath puffing against his neck.

Then, just as shockingly as it had started, it was over.

Yellow emergency lights flicked on all over the laugh floor, illuminating the smoky darkness. Randall opened his eyes and saw Nona looking up at him, breathing hard, her heart beating butterfly-fast against his chest. For a moment he was intensely aware that this was the closest he'd been to a woman of any variety in-hell, years.

Her eyes were blue. Very wide and very blue, with tangled violet lashes.

Then Nona said softly, "Can you get off me? Please?"

Then the reality of the situation came crashing back down, the who and the where and the why. Randall rolled to the side and got to his feet, trying not to look at her. He scanned the floor. Monsters had been hurt, that much was clear-some were being carried towards the exit, or were limping there themselves. Sullivan was on his phone and patting out little flames that had caught in his fur, while directing traffic so the exits didn't become jammed full.

"Oh, hell," Nona said breathlessly, boosting herself to her feet beside him. "Shit. The canisters-I mean, sometimes they go off like that, but never all at once. Dammit, they took out the entire floor."

Randall shook his head silently. He felt displaced for a moment, out of pace with himself. He thought of the disassembled canister waiting on his workbench, and a wave of frustration rolled over him as again the mystery pulled at him, demanding he solve it: what _was _it about the laugh canisters that made them so volatile?

"Randall," Nona said, her voice strange and trembling.

It was that, along with the use of his real name instead of the insulting nickname she'd come up with that made him look at her. Even in the harsh yellow light it was clear that Nona had paled dramatically, her skin gone blue-white. Her eyes were huge and her mouth looked vulnerable, and she was staring at him like she'd seen a ghost.

Randall looked down at himself. He couldn't see what was wrong. Like they did when he was surprised or stressed, his scales had taken on the colors of the things nearest them-which, in this case, had been Nona. Pink from her shirt and blue from her skin, and purple streaks on his neck and chest where her hair had touched him. Randall fixed it in a second, his scales shifting back to his own blue-speckled purple.

"I didn't know you could do that," Nona said, still shaky-voiced.

Randall scowled at her, on more familiar ground with annoyance. "You've worked with me for four days. How'd you manage that?"

Nona shook her head and, suddenly, she was looking everywhere but at him. "We should probably leave," she mumbled. "I have to find Alice…"

With that, Randall watched as she all but ran away from him, her tail flicking along behind her, and wondered what the hell had just happened.

When Alice and Nona got back to their apartment Nona went straight to her bedroom, telling Alice she needed to sleep. It wasn't a lie exactly, but that wasn't why she needed to be alone.

Nona leaned forward on her bed, her hands resting on her splayed knees, and gave in to the unreality that had been threatening to crash on her for the last hour. There had been too much stress today. Too much. And now _this._

It couldn't be. It really and truly couldn't. This was the universe fucking up on her.

_You can't be, _she thought. _You can't, you can't…_

Into the quiet of her room Nona whispered one word.

"Randy?"


End file.
